New Hydrologic Projections

The Bureau of Reclamation has released new hydrologic projections that will help local water managers answer questions about future climate, stream flow and water resources. This new scientific data uses the updated World Climate Research Program climate projections that have been scaled to a finer resolution (downscaled) for water management decision support systems.

The hydrologic data was derived from new downscaled climate projections using the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) data from the World Climate Research Program that was made available by Reclamation and collaborators in May 2013. To develop the new hydrologic projections, the group translated 97 of those downscaled CMIP5 climate projections into fine resolution projections of hydrology for the contiguous United States.

The new hydrology projections are available at http://bit.ly/1rwh1kS. Scientists and engineers can use this website to quickly access and download the new information.

These new hydrology projections were developed by Reclamation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Corporation for Atmospheric Research in collaboration with Climate Analytics Group, Climate Central, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Santa Clara University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and U.S. Geological Survey.